Interview of TAdviser with the CEO of BMP Logic company Maria Kamennova

Maria Kamennova: Really, elements of process management – what is business process, process control and so on - need not to be explained to nobody. 90% of heads, at least at the most initial level understand it. On a five-point scale I would estimate the current level of a process maturity of the Russian market between 3+ and 4+. At the same time as motivation for business process optimization approximately in 70% of the Russian organizations serves implementation of information systems. In other 30% process optimization is conducted also without automation, and direct desire of the management to increase efficiency and transparency of business is the cause. I will notice what not everyone understands as a concept of process management same, and the ability to freely use process terminology does not mean ability to manage so freely processes in practice. When you begin to find out what really happens in the company, it turns out occasionally that the head nevertheless manages not business processes, but functions or structural divisions.

Maria Kamennova: It depends on the level of a process maturity of the company. If the company only starts the first BPM initiatives, I persistently would recommend to attract external consultants – just in order that case went quicker. Specialists will provide trainings, will share experience, will prompt. Certainly, it will be useful, especially for heads. It is possible to do without external consultants, but it is like to self-medicate when there is an opportunity to receive the qualified medical care. As the level of a process maturity of the company grows, it should accumulate in staff of own specialists in process management. Appearance of the of the "process champions" capable is not simple to manage business processes, but also having leadership skills, – one of crucial elements of increase in a managerial maturity of the company in general.

Maria Kamennova: It is not necessary to be the bigger royalist, than the king. I cannot point to an accurate edge for import substitution in business consulting, at least the same degree of clearness, as for domestic software. The simplest answer – yes, it should be the Russian company with the Russian consultants. But business consulting is a humanitarian direction as art or literature. The Russian consulting companies have the advantages, foreign – the. The western companies taught us tremendous lessons of professionalism, especially at the beginning and the middle of the 90th. The main advantage and advantage of the foreign companies, in my opinion, consists in the knowledge bases which are saved up by them and experience. This most valuable. Our consultants are comparable on skill level with western, but are naturally limited to knowledge and experiment only on those projects which they executed in Russia. They have no global approach to consulting projects owing to lack of the international experience. And very often there is a wish to look how function in the USA, Canada or, for example, Italy the enterprises generating the electric power, or the large mail companies.

Maria Kamennova: Naturally, there are pluses and there are minuses. Yes, each state should protect the producers in a number of spheres, including in the field of software. We have vendors (for example, developers of antivirus software) who do not need to be protected, they broke through on international market and take the leading positions there. But is also such which protectionism from the state will help to finish the products, at them will be more projects and clients, and they will be able to occupy the niche in the market. But I think that import substitution – after all a temporary measure. As a result a certain balance should be found, we should not become isolated in the borders.

Maria Kamennova: I would tell that this balance is looked for.

Maria Kamennova: I already said that in business consulting all is a little in a different way. Consulting is brains, experience of the implemented projects. Therefore there is an import substitution or it is absent – it is not so important. Not be engaged in import substitution of brains! There are people who can really make something in management consulting and they many times proved it, and there are those which can only speak. And in it an essence. Another thing is that in BPM consulting, for example, tools for modeling and the analysis of business processes are used. We, as well as many others, work with the ARIS system of Software AG company, the industry standard de facto, and it is difficult for me to provide that in the market there will be in the nearest future a software product which could be compared to this German system functionally. There are several Russian developments, but to them are still far to what offers Software AG.

Maria Kamennova: From my point of view, this danger is small as it is not mission critical application, not an ERP system which should work in mode 24x7, risks is significantly lower. Therefore, from my point of view, it is not obligatory to substitute software of such class.

Maria Kamennova: The competition was, is and will be. It is the market. There are subjects connected with strategic questions, with issues of global transformation of the company where the western companies have advantage owing to the international experience what we already spoke about. In Russia the only large mail company – Russian Post, and only the largest railway – the Russian Railway. With any other company of the similar sizes from these industries domestic business consultants cannot work. The corresponding experience can be gained only in the western markets, for example, in Deutsche Bahn AG, the large German railway operator, or at the Canadian railroads. And it is specifics of Russia – large natural monopolies in many industries. To make their business it is better, we should address the international experience which is available for "Big Four". A little differently the situation, for example, in the field of retail is. At us there is a lot of retailers so it is possible to reveal their best practices by contrastive analysis the practician in the Russian retail market.

Maria Kamennova: Yes, it also means: for study of managerial questions of the top level - strategic, transformational – the Russian monopolists involve consultants from "Big Four" that, probably, is justified.

Maria Kamennova: Our company, in particular, is engaged in business processes, and it belongs more likely to the operational level of business, than to strategic. Work at the level of business processes begins after strategy and a business model of the company are worked out. The better it will be made, the it is simpler to work to us.

Maria Kamennova: What we, actually, also do. It is the standard circuit when the western consultants are engaged in study of strategy, and we pick up at them questions of the organization of business processes and in more detail we study them.

Maria Kamennova: In literal sense of this word we had no import-substituting projects yet. But I will note that recently there were new projects with high transformational potential not only at the level of the organization of business processes, but also above. It occurred because from clients there was interest in a business transformation subject, and experience of the Russian business consultants grew.

Maria Kamennova: Russian Post, project of 2015.

Maria Kamennova: We optimized processes of work with citizens' appeals in case of loss of mailings or some other situations. The main problem was that Russian Post seriously exceeded the terms of the response to the corresponding requests set by regulations. It was connected, including, with lack of uniform ordered calls accounting. Besides, there were more than 50 scenarios of work with citizens' appeals. At first we analyzed these processes, reduced the number of scenarios to five, then optimized and automated processes using the Metasonic BPMS platform. It was succeeded to consider how many comes the addresses what it addresses, in their what regions is more, in what it is less in what processing of each address manages – and to compare to indicators of the foreign mail companies. As a result of this work terms of processing of addresses were reduced from 60 days to 30 (for addresses of individuals — up to 17), and the cost of processing of addresses fell last year by 44%, and want to lower it by 15%.

Maria Kamennova: This year we implemented the project in MegaFon – there we dealt with issues of fall forward of an output to the market of new services (time-to-market in the western terminology). This question in the telecommunication market is particularly acute very much: if the new service is brought to the market more than two months, then it is possible not to hurry – competitors already made everything. The interaction format in this project was interesting: we came to meetings with the staff of MegaFon involved within the project and moderated their work on design and the detailed description of target processes. Earlier customers completely left similar works for consultants.

Maria Kamennova: The general trend – transformation of traditional business in digital. It is connected not just with automation, and with implementation of new technologies (for example, Internet of Things for the b2b-market assuming interaction in the machine-to-machine format without participation of the person) that requires new business models, other organizational structure and business processes. We take into account this trend on digital business and we prepare the offer of consulting services on digital transformation of business. On September 29 together with our German partners from Scheer GmbH company we held in Moscow the first master class in digital transformation for the leading Russian companies. The subject is popular, and we will develop this direction.